Marginal Revolution: Where are the economic historians?

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Where are the economic historians?

Read Eric Rauchway's excellent post. Excerpt:

Economic history might have moved out of history departments for market reasons as well. If, to pursue economic history, you had to master technical skills that would make you eligible for an appointment in an economics department, you would probably prefer that to an appointment in a history department: economists get paid more because they're eligible for employment in government and business as well as universities.

Some of the economic historians are coming to George Mason; this year we hired John Nye, Werner Troesken, and Gary Richardson. New hire Peter Leeson does some economic history as well. We've gone from a minor player in the field to a top department for economic history.

But will they be fun at lunch?

Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 28, 2007 at 11:56 AM in Economics, History | Permalink

Comments

At least Nye will be, Robin Hanson-like figure that he is and
refugee from the Wash U blowout.

I applaud the GMU econ dept. for moving in this direction.

Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Mar 28, 2007 11:51:10 AM

I went to Wash U and studied economics. Sure, sure, Nye is charming and funny and fun to argue with. He's also 'fun' if you like tall tales. Ha.

Another question: Can we get a GMU economic history blog going soon then? That'd be awesome. But would it work? Tyler, thoughts?

Posted by: The Octagon at Mar 28, 2007 12:24:41 PM

Very interesting. Could you comment on a related issue? It was my understanding several years ago that economic history was a fairly marginal field within economics; I recall complaints that many economics grad. students felt no need to learn economic history, and that many prominent departments had one or no economic historians. Is that still the case, or has economic history bounced back?

Posted by: v. at Mar 28, 2007 1:52:43 PM

In my experience, historians are great fun. They have a wealth of good stories, and they know how to tell them well.

Posted by: James Grimmelmann at Mar 28, 2007 2:28:12 PM

I took a summer course with GMU-er Thomas Rustici back in 2003 and he spent a lot of time on economic history. At the start of the course (Econ. and Public Policy for journalists), he promised that by the end of course we wouldn't view the world the same way. We all rolled our eyes. At the end of the summer I didn't see the world in the same way so much that I changed my minor to economics.

Posted by: TJ at Mar 28, 2007 3:53:25 PM

I found it mildly amusing that Rauchway refers to Robert Fogel as an economic historian of railroads, rather than listing him with the experts on slavery, emancipation and reconstruction. Not that there's anything unimportant about Railroads and American Economic Growth

Posted by: brianS at Mar 28, 2007 7:44:18 PM

Hmm. I guess I needed my afternoon coffee. :-) Rauchway lists him both ways

Posted by: brianS at Mar 28, 2007 7:57:20 PM

Jasamcarl's comment on Rauchway's post says it all:

"Historians would emphasize a rejection of the sort of rationalist, deductionist thinking that is a necessary part of economics and all positivist social sciences."

The "cultural turn" in history has bred an intolerance for analytical thinking. If an argument doesn't conform to their priors, many historians these days will find a way to dismiss it that spares them the burden of actually reading it.

Posted by: econhist at Mar 28, 2007 9:34:35 PM

@ v: "Could you comment on a related issue? It was my understanding several years ago that economic history was a fairly marginal field within economics; I recall complaints that many economics grad. students felt no need to learn economic history, and that many prominent departments had one or no economic historians. Is that still the case, or has economic history bounced back?"

I thought so, too.

BTW: There's no post ID attached to the hyperlink [Read Eric Rauchway's excellent post]. In case anyone's confused, the link for the actual post is: http://www.tnr.com/blog/openuniversity?pid=93423

Otherwise, the link just takes you to the blog's main index: http://www.tnr.com/blog/openuniversity

Posted by: Aaron at Mar 30, 2007 11:22:13 AM

It is precisely because there has been this rather mindless
marginalization of economic history in so many lockstep economics
departments that I applaud GMU's effort to build up there stable
of these interesting folks.

Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Mar 30, 2007 12:06:41 PM

Obviously, they won't live up to the Catallarchy gang.

Posted by: Scott Scheule at Apr 5, 2007 6:50:13 PM

Someone will have to tell me about the future of legal history in law schools and business history in business schools.

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